“McCulloch’s book is indispensable to anyone interested
in the twentieth-century Scottish Renaissance, a period of Scottish literature rich
in first-class writers and poets: MacDiarmid, Edwin Muir, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Neil
Gunn, William Soutar, Catherine Carswell and many others. The book unfolds the story
of Scotland’s cultural development as a many-layered narrative. Serious essays
are presented in well-judged counterpoint to private letters, malicious flytings and
delicious gossip.” — The Times Literary Supplement

“McCulloch gives a vivid sense of how confusing and often
exasperating the 20th-century ‘Scottish Renaissance’ acually felt as an experience to
live through; and how little agreement there was on what (if anything) was really going
on.” — The Scotsman

“The eclectic collection in this book is fascinating.”
— The Herald

What made the twentieth-century interwar literary renaissance unique among Scottish
cultural movements was the belief of those involved that any regeneration of the
nation’s artistic culture could not be separated from revival in its social,
economic and political life. An additional priority was engagement with Europe and
with the artistic and intellectual ideas of the modern period. Nationalism,
internationalism and modernity were therefore seen as complementary and interactive
parts of an ambitious national renewal project.

Modernism and Nationalism: Literature and Society in Scotland 1918-1939 is an
edited collection of primary sources from this challenging period. Through excerpts
from periodical articles, book chapters, letters and other documents, it brings us
the voices of writers such as MacDiarmid, Gunn, Linklater, Compton Mackenzie, Naomi
Mitchison, the Muirs, Carswells and many others, reviewing and arguing over the
literary, social, economic and political issues of their time, both at home and
abroad, while in the process offering new insights into the ideas behind their own
creative writing. The book makes an important contribution to our understanding of
interwar Scotland.

CONTENTSIllustrations
Introduction

TOWARDS A SCOTTISH LITERARY RENAISSANCE

1 Preliminary: What is Scottish Literature?
1.1 Robert Louis Stevenson, from letter to S.R. Crockett (1888)
1.2 W. MacNeile Dixon, from Introduction to The Edinburgh Book of Scottish Verse (1910)
1.3 G.R. Blake, from Scotland of the Scots (1918)
1.4 G. Gregory Smith, from Scottish Literature: Character and Influence (1919)
1.5 T.S. Eliot, ‘Was There a Scottish Literature?’ (Athenaeum August 1919)

2 Language, Identity and the Vernacular Debate
2.1 Extract from Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the London Robert Burns Club (June 1920)
2.2 Representative Letters of Support for Vernacular Circle Proposal
2.3 W.A. Craigie, from ‘The Present State of the Scottish Tongue’ (January 1921)
2.4 J.M. Bulloch, from ‘The Delight of the Doric in the Diminutive (December 1921)
2.5 C.M. Grieve, from letters to Aberdeen Free Press (December 1921 and January 1922)
2.6 James Pittendrigh MacGillivray, from Preface to Bog Myrtle and Peat Reek (1921)
2.7 C.M. Grieve, from Dunfermline Press (August and September 1922)
2.8 C.M. Grieve, from Scottish Chapbook (October 1922)
2.9 Edwin Muir, from ‘A Note on the Scottish Ballads’ (Freeman January 1923)
2.10 C.M. Grieve, from ‘Causerie: A Theory of Scots Letters’ (Scottish Chapbook February and March 1923)
2.11 ‘The Scottish Vernacular in Music’ (Glasgow Herald October 1923)
2.12 John Buchan, from Introduction to The Northern Muse (1925)
2.13 Lorna Moon, from letters to David Laurance Chambers (August 1928)
2.14 Gordon Leslie Rayne, from ‘This Scottish Tongue: The Renascence and the Vernacular (Scots Magazine May 1933)
2.15 Dane M’Neil [Neil M. Gunn], from ‘The Scottish Renascence’ (Scots Magazine June 1933)
2.16 Lewis Grassic Gibbon, from ‘Literary Lights’ (1934)
2.17 Edwin Muir, from ‘Literature in Scotland’ (Spectator May 1934)
2.18 Neil M. Gunn, ‘Preserving the Scottish Tongue: A Legacy and How to use It’ (Scots Magazine November 1935)
2.19 Edwin Muir, from Scott and Scotland (1936)
2.20 William Soutar, from ‘Debatable Land’ (Outlook October1936)
2.21 Neil M. Gunn, from review of Scott and Scotland (Scots Magazine October 1936)
2.22 Catherine Carswell, ‘The Scottish Writer’ (Spectator December 1936)
2.23 David Daiches, from ‘Dialect and the Lyric Poet’ (Outlook May 1936)
2.24 William Soutar, ‘Faith in the Vernacular’ (Voice of Scotland June–August 1938)

Dr Margery Palmer McCulloch is Research Fellow in Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow. She has written widely on twentieth-century Scottish literature, her previous books including critical studies of Neil M. Gunn and Edwin Muir.

Cover illustration: ‘The Engineer, His Wife and His Family’,
William McCance (1894–1970). Illustration courtesy of Mrs Margaret McCance and the Hunterian Gallery, Glasgow.

Cover design: Mark Blackadder

Also available:

Scottish & International ModernismsRelationships and Reconfigurations
ed. Emma Dymock & Margery Palmer McCullochASLS Occasional Papers series No. 15This collection of essays illustrates the strongly international and modernist dimension of Scotland’s interwar revival, and illuminates the relationships between Scottish and non-Scottish writers and contexts. It also includes two chapters on the contribution made to this revival by Scottish visual art and music.